Stop the press !

Scritti Politti in the press. An excellent leader article in The Guardian Online, referring to the Mercury Music Prize nomination (a promotional catalyst in itself, great !). Thanks Enda for pointing it out to us. And whilst websurfing I stumbled upon this rather strange double review of PSB’s Fundamental and Scritti’s White Bread Black Beer in the very American City Pages. One hit wonders…. ? I wonder.

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Peter07.21.06 / 2pm

“…the pomo Prince…or just Duran Duran with footnotes”. Priceless! This is actually a pretty perceptive and funny review IMO. In any case Green does pretty well out of it, once the reviewer gets the Brit bashing out of his system anyway.

Roberto07.21.06 / 5pm

What’s even spookier is that 7 days ago, I saw Scritti live at Latitude. Tonight I’m seeing the Pet Shop Boys live at Thetford Forest !

Chris Norris07.21.06 / 10pm

Another article worth reading is in today’s London Evening Standard. It’s the first time I’ve seen in print Green’s reaction to the Mercury Prize nomination — he’s understandably delighted — and there’s a hint that a follow-up album may not be too far off in the future.

As a British critic I always acknowledge when an artist is big in their home country but not here. The US writers regularly treat anyone who hasn’t had continuous Bilboard chart success as a failure or one hit wonder. And always seem to view lack of commercial success as artistic failure: “catchy, funky, useless ’99 not-quite-comeback, Anomie & Bonhomie”
In what way can it be useless if it’s good?
And what on earth is this supposed to mean: “a retroactive cult of benighted Brits who cutely credit Gartside with inventing R&B, and hip U.S. indie kids nostalgic for an era they weren’t alive to scoff at.”?
I didn’t notice any at the Scala.
Gah!

Roberto07.22.06 / 12pm

Having read that review again, I can honestly say that it’s the most turgid piece of crap I’ve read in a long time !! The author (I won’t call him a reviewer as he reviews nothing except his own opinion) is trying so hard to impress his readership by eating up a dictionary and spewing out long, supposedly baffling and complex words to convey the image of someone who really knows what they are talking about. It’s all very well having a healthy vocabulary, but the intelligence to use it well is just as important.

As Tim says, in the U.S., if you haven’t had commercial success, you are a failure, because music is a business over there more than anywhere else. Don’t get me wrong, the UK is almost as bad, but at least we recognise young, vibrant talent and give them a pedestal to get their work out there. I could sit and roll off a string of bands that all enjoy commercial success to one degree or another, yet have critical acclaim in equal measure. The U.S. is hindered by it’s geography, as it hinders most everything else politically and culturally over there, but there are pockets of common sense, filled with people who know that there is a whole world outside of their borders, brimming with art and culture and begging to be enjoyed.

Having seen both Scritti & PSB live in the last seven days, I can safely say that they are both making fine music now, as they were back when this guy was still in nappies (diapers for our American cousins ;) )

To my American bretheren, this is not an anti U.S. post. I work closely with many Americans here in the UK and I get a healthy balance of opinion from them, but many of them are here because they enjoy the freedom of cultural exploration that is prevelant in Europe, and many would never consider going back hom, which is sad.

I love America, I love the people and the country, so please don’t take this the wrong way, as can often happen in emotionless text based communication :)

Of all the gin joints in all the world…City Pages is a local Twin Cities rag for Twin Citians like me. You find this paper in magazine racks that are free. It is filled with this kind of crap. I only read it when I am eating lunch alone at the Green Mill when my laptop is broken.

PS I never eat alone and I have a Mac. (They don’t break. :)

Robin07.22.06 / 10pm

Darlings, keep in mind: There are Scritti fans everywhere, of every stripe, and some of us happen to be American, and some of us happen to have been listening since the late 70’s and ‘Skank Bloc Bologna’, some of us have indeed followed Green thru every twist and turn and stretch of downtime in the decades since then, and some of us are just plain folks and not writers for US regional weekly free rags who have column inches to fill and glib lazy Pitchforky bon mots with which to fill them, and some of us are thrilled and elated and vicariously satisfied with WBBB’s Mercury nod…

david campany07.24.06 / 5pm

oh america. ‘cradle of the best and of the worst’, as a canadian once sang. ‘i wrap that flag around me like a dorothy lamour sarong’ (sang another)…

brian austin07.25.06 / 3am

“city pages” is stuck in a Village Voice mindset – all that posturing prose is compensating from some perceived lack. and yes, another Minnesotan who can vouch for it’s status as a “free” – i.e., valueless read. “Anomie & Bonhomie” – well, I didn’t like it at all — at least for the first dozed plays. and I suspect “WB,BB” will be the same. :)

John Hyde – drop me a note if you’d like to chat Scritti at your local Green Mill. and yep – note the email here: brianaustin@mac.com

I’m struggling with some of the above comments. I think this Keith Harris guy actually likes WBBB and clearly respects what GG is trying to achieve – he certainly listened and selected his lyric quotes perceptively. I think Peter had it about right in his first response.

Sam07.25.06 / 1pm

Yeah, I think some people need to untwist their knickers and read the review again.
;)

Roberto07.25.06 / 8pm

It was my second and third readings of that poor excuse for journalism that led me to believe it was a piece of nationalistic, xenophobic, belligerent crap :)

Forget the fact that I like Scritti and PSB, it’s the piss poor style of journalism that really grates. We have similar articles and writers here in the UK, with similar attitudes, and they end up doing those “That Was 1983!” flashback type shows where no-one knows who they are or why they have been chosen as any authority on the era when it’s quite clear they were still a soap dodging student at the time and were fine honing their ability to use a thesaurus to come up with “alternative” writings.

Now that it has come to light that it is from a “free” magazine, I’m hardly surprised that no-one wants to pay the guy for his work. It’s just about fit to wipe the backside of the wino that ends up grabbing a handful for bedding and toiletries :)

Anyway, it’s done with. Let’s move on. I hear the NY Times has a good review in it today :)

Peter07.26.06 / 1am

Well Roberto, you seem to be happy to enjoy the freedom to express yourself at length on a “free” site, but it’s not for me to dwell on those ironies. Forget trendy buzzwords like ‘xenophobic’, this is an interesting article and don’t forget the mere fact that it generates debate is actually the primary argument in defence of its existence. Now can we please just be nice?

Thanks for the link Joe. There’s something so polite and rarefied about their use of ‘Mr Gartside’ through that article. Cute! The whole content/tone contributes to this growing feeling I have that there is something unique about this particular renaissance of Green’s and that we can expect him to stay the course for once. What do I know, but my waters tell me the planets are in alignment – here’s to a new album in 2007…

russell richardson07.26.06 / 3am

Here’s the NY Times text for those of you who don’t fancy joining their website just to read it. :-)
PS miraculously found ONE COPY of WBBB in hicktown emporium. The reach in long. then I wondered if I hadn’t unwittingly deprived some other person of the pleasure. Ah. Fortunately (pace Mr. benjamin) there will be more copies fuelled by the pull of demand. or something.
i think it’s a very nice article.

New York Times July 25, 2006
Critic’s Notebook
The Man Behind Scritti Politti, Mellower Now, Has Found His Perfect Way

By BEN RATLIFF
Green Gartside, the singer and the mind behind the band Scritti Politti, is still uptight about interviews. Itâ€™s not interviews per se, but rather, interviews as part of the whole mercantile go-round: re-enacting his songs, talking about them, locating his target audience.

Youâ€™ve heard this before: the skeptical artist. But Mr. Gartsideâ€™s truculence has seemed unnecessarily self-punishing. He is an unusually good talker, fluid and rigorous. He writes lovely pop songs, and sings them well. He is not insignificant: many remember his songs, like the early indie breakthrough â€œThe Sweetest Girlâ€ from 1981, the full-scale hits â€œWood Beezâ€ and â€œPerfect Wayâ€ from the mid-80â€™s. A small but devoted audience still venerates him for his earliest work, when Scritti Politti was a brainy, uneasy postpunk band, making songs that sounded like angry jigsaw puzzles. (The bandâ€™s name is a bowdlerization of the title of a book by the Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci.)

Scritti Politti â€” which is to say Mr. Gartside, alone in a home studio in London â€” recently made a new record, â€œWhite Bread Black Beer.â€ Released today, it is his best work in 20 years, remarkably beautiful: the sound of â€œpopâ€ as in the Lennon-McCartney tradition, reconciled with â€œpopâ€ as in the R & B and dance music he loves equally.

The record is subtle and exacting, with Mr. Gartsideâ€™s epicene vocals pushed up in the mix, sometimes multitracked into a one-man chorus. Lines like â€œYou bet your petrococadollar that I wonâ€™t remember/ Iâ€™ve been in the marketplace since last Julyâ€ he might have sung back in the 70â€™s, but you can see his mature focus on craft: it is in the precision of the phrasing and the sweetness of the melody. Last week the record was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize in Britain, alongside records by Thom Yorke and the Arctic Monkeys.

Mr. Gartside arrived for a lunch interview last week on edge. He had just had his first meeting with the heads of his American label, Nonesuch; it made him nervous, he said. Now 51, he resembles a slimmer, red-haired version of the actor Jeff Daniels. He drummed his fingers on the table. He had sworn off alcohol until he returned home to London. â€œItâ€™s very unlike me,â€ he said, lofty and glum. â€œI normally have an appalling diet and drink heavily.â€

â€œWhite Bread Black Beerâ€ â€” the title refers to his starch-and-Guinness regimen, and to the notion of â€œwhite breadâ€ pop, which he has often defended â€” prompts a facile question. If the bandâ€™s early work was about dismantling pop, and then the mid-80â€™s phase was the apotheosis of pop, then whatâ€™s the new album about?

Mr. Gartside drew a deep breath and shifted into theory. He spoke of the impossibility of free will and truth; of neo-pragmatism, the philosophy sometimes associated with the philosopher Richard Rorty; of the unfair critical â€œprivilegingâ€ of rock over pop, and the ways in which truly popular music hasnâ€™t answered the logic of late capitalism in the same predictable way that the indie-rock tradition has. One glimpsed the porcupine he must have been as a younger man: combative, sardonic, high-strung.

At this point, my tape recorder ate its cassette. He seemed strangely excited. â€œHow good is your memory?â€ he asked. â€œI donâ€™t mind being misquoted, you know.â€

Heâ€™s much better than he once was. Before Mr. Gartside started playing gigs again this year, he had sworn off performing for 27 years. In 1979 he suffered an anxiety attack one night after a show in Brighton. He went home to Wales to recuperate for nine months.

Naturally, he chose a new course that would bring him the most agony possible: to repudiate the whole postpunk thing and become an international pop star. Ridiculous as it may sound, he seems to have gone about it according to theoretical principles: he was renouncing the postpunk, do-it-yourself musical culture as a decaying, false-founded construct, just a new set of restrictions. During his convalescence he wrote a long, unpublished screed on â€œthe psychology and politics of rhythm.â€

This is part of the reason Mr. Gartside became heroic to a certain type of bookish, leftist, English teenage boy, and why so many of those boys grew up proclaiming â€œThe Sweetest Girlâ€ to be the perfect pop song.

Suspicious as he may be of the critical advantages given to singer-songwriter-type music over commercial pop, he has been the beneficiary of it. Still, itâ€™s hard to imagine him having any patience for hearing any song, even his own, called â€œperfect.â€

Mr. Gartside studied fine arts at the University of Leeds in the late 70â€™s, but spent very little time as a studio artist, instead spending his time setting up lectures about politics and culture in rooms above local pubs. He had a special interest in philosophy and critical theory, and consequently, most of his songs open up questions about language and the meaning of truth.

One of many examples was â€œWood Beez (Pray Like Aretha Franklin),â€ an effortless-sounding, funky, synthesizered-up song. At this point his aerated singing voice had lost its London accent and become what he calls trans-Atlantic. (Many wondered at the time why he suddenly sounded a bit like Michael Jackson. He might have given the philosophical response: Who is Michael Jackson to sound like Michael Jackson?) â€œWood Beezâ€ is a love song, and the lyrics form an epistemological game about â€œwould besâ€: thereâ€™s nothing he â€œwouldnâ€™t beâ€ to get closer to the songâ€™s addressee. So then what is he, really?

The producer Arif Mardin, who died last month, heard Mr. Gartsideâ€™s demos in 1983, liked them and agreed to work with him in the United States. This was not long after the Human Leagueâ€™s hit â€œDonâ€™t You Want Me,â€ and there was a desire among record labels for the next group that could mix English pop with glossy funk. Within seven years Mr. Gartside went from playing gigs alongside Gang of Four and consorting with the Art & Language group, the hard-core conceptual-art collaborative, to rehearsing with an elderly Manhattan vocal coach who had formerly worked with Liza Minnelli.

Mr. Gartside loved Mr. Mardinâ€™s productions, especially the records he had made with Chaka Khan. (â€œThey were clever and difficult,â€ he said.) He was finding out about black pop, of which he had known little during his childhood, and wanted to record his songs with the best studio musicians available: a weird ripple of confidence for someone who contends that he is not a great singer, and who had already been hospitalized twice for acute anxiety.

Remarkably, he did what he set out to do. Didnâ€™t he feel a little justified by the success of â€œPerfect Wayâ€? After all, the work, supported by his theories, won through.

â€œIt was awful,â€ Mr. Gartside said. He had constructed a delicate critical distance on his pop stardom, which closed up, he said, as soon as he walked on the set of â€œAmerican Bandstand.â€ The result was that he eventually spent much more time on Welsh retreats, doing little and living off his royalties.

For â€œWhite Bread Black Beer,â€ he trusted the instincts of Geoff Travis, the founder of Rough Trade, his English label, and also his manager: rather than enlist the help of studio musicians, he completed the whole thing by himself in his tiny home studio. And, with a group of musicians recruited from his local pub in Hackney, Mr. Gartside has started a Scritti Politti tour. (American dates are being arranged for the fall.)

Mr. Gartside seems to have given up his ambitions for reaching large numbers of people with his music: this is a record, after all, that labored under the working title of â€œIs Richard Rorty Right or Wrong?â€ He is trying to enjoy himself a little. He has grown up, calmed down and gotten married. The scale, finally, seems right.

After he had flown back home last week, I called Mr. Gartside on his cellphone. He was drinking stout and eating potato chips outside the pub and sounded much happier. I asked if I had misheard him: he really didnâ€™t mind being misquoted?

â€œOh, no!â€ he said effusively. Why â€” because thereâ€™s no absolute truth? â€œSomething like that,â€ he said. â€œAlso, the privileging thatâ€™s given to the quotation: the voice, the specific utterance, the signature. Iâ€™m steeped in a tradition thatâ€™s suspicious of all that.â€

That’s a great read. Is this article gonna appear in print as well? Gonna try and get a copy here in the Netherlands, would like to have it.

Sam07.26.06 / 12pm

Sorry Roberto to bring it up again but I think you have misinterpreted the article. Surely this quote shows he agrees with you,
“for anyone in the U.S. who remembers the ’80s as they’re officially instructed to, the groups’ legacies barely extend beyond “West End Girls” and “Perfect Way.” But this bottom-line approach to the past, as usual, misses the point. ”
And just because something is free doesn’t mean its rubbish, especialy when it comes to music journalism!